It’s too early for cake and ice cream, but Huddle is celebrating its 1,000 th edition today. We hope it’s become an indispensable part of your morning – even if you only read the trivia question! For Marty Kady, Jonathan Allen and others who have played Huddle QB, we thank you for reading us these past five years. Here’s to the next 1,000 Huddles!

THE ROGERS REPORT: BUDGET BATTLES, TAKE TWO -- House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s 2013 budget sparked yet another war over spending, evoking “bad memories” of last summer’s nasty debt brawl. POLITICO’s David Rogers reports: “House Republicans moved first, rolling out their plan to cut by half the deficits in President Barack Obama’s February budget — but in the process also walking away from agreements made in the Budget Control Act last August. Senate Democrats countered with a bare-bones resolution designed to highlight what they see as a betrayal. Showing no remorse, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) proposed a lightning strike of domestic cuts to undo another element of the BCA: automatic cuts to defense in January.”

--The next step: more fighting, in both the short- and long-terms. “This sequester machinery was designed specifically by the White House to pressure the GOP to come to the table on tax increases as part of deficit reduction,” Rogers writes. “Ryan’s budget now offers conservatives a path out of this box canyon but runs squarely into the Democratic Senate — a prescription for more partisan conflict. … [The budget] makes it almost certain that most of the government will be dependent on a stopgap, continuing resolution after the current 2012 appropriations bills run out Sept. 30. Those same bills now total near $1.043 trillion in accordance with the debt accords. Thus the lower $1.028 trillion House cap can’t be sustained without the threat of a government shutdown — weeks before the elections.” http://bit.ly/GESlKl

--Before Democrats and Republicans can fight it out, Ryan’s budget needs to pass out of the House Budget committee tonight. Roll Call’s Daniel Newhauser, Meredith Shiner and Steven T. Dennis report that’s not a sure bet: “If all of the Budget Committee Democrats vote against Ryan’s proposal in today’s markup as expected, just three of the 22 Republican members voting against the resolution could mark the end of the road. The panel is stacked with conservative Republican Study Committee members and tea party freshmen who gripe that the plan does not go far enough to address the debt. Interviews with Members and staff showed that the votes to move the plan out of committee were not yet there on Tuesday evening. While most Budget Committee Republicans are onboard with the proposal, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (Kan.) was the first Republican to say he would vote against the measure and Reps. Todd Akin (Mo.) and Justin Amash (Mich.) were still undecided.” Amash doesn’t like the legislation’s plan to delay the sequestration cuts and Akin is concerned about its impact on the defense budget. http://bit.ly/GF6QiI

--Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney wholeheartedly endorsed the plan yesterday, a sign The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes finds encouraging: “It indicates that Romney is ready, assuming he wins the presidential nomination, to join with congressional Republicans to run on a common agenda.” Barnes also suggests Ryan as a potential VP pick for Romney. http://bit.ly/GCSajx

--The Los Angeles Times’ Lisa Mascaro notes that Ron Paul will probably vote against the budget: “‘This budget doesn't actually 'cut' any spending,’ he said. ‘It only reduces assumed increases in spending — essentially playing the same game the Washington establishment has played for years with our hard-earned money.’” http://lat.ms/GEG7RR

MORE BUDGET NEWS BELOW …

CANTOR TO UNVEIL SMALL BUSINESS TAX CUT -- While Ryan had his day in the sun yesterday, the remaining two-thirds of the Young Guns are unveiling a small business tax cut today on the Hill. Roll Call's John Stanton has more: "Under the Virginia Republican’s bill, which will be introduced in the House today, small businesses with 499 or fewer employees would be able to deduct up to 20 percent of their income taxes, which could total up to 50 percent of the wages they pay employees. The goal, Cantor said Tuesday, is to 'help small businesses create more jobs' while Congress continues to struggle with the broader tax reform effort." The House will take up the bill the week of April 16th, when tax returns are due. Cantor said he hopes the tightly-tailored bill can follow the lead of the JOBS Act and find a way through Congress' bipartisan gridlock. http://bit.ly/GC3kpg

CANTOR … ER, KINZINGER BEATS MANZULLO -- Justifying Cantor’s intervention on his behalf, Rep. Adam Kinzinger prevailed over fellow Republican Rep. Don Manzullo, leading with 55.9 percent of the vote to 44.1 percent with 99.6 percent of precincts reporting. POLITICO’s David Catanese and Alex Isenstadt report: “Far from deterring them, Kinzinger’s win could act as an incentive for House leaders like Cantor to intervene in future primary contests. … The Manzullo vs. Kinzinger race was framed as a battle of the past versus the future. Kinzinger — who led Manzullo, 56 to 43 percent, with 87 percent of precincts reporting — swept into office in an 87-member House GOP freshman class determined to change Washington while casting Manzullo as a creaky lawmaker long past his prime. … But Kinzinger’s dogged ground game — which included holding 30 town hall meetings in the newly configured 16th Congressional District over just the past two months — carried the day.” http://bit.ly/GBWNQ6

ELSEWHERE IN THE LAND OF LINCOLN -- Besides the Manzullo-Kinzinger showdown, there were three closely-watched Democratic primary showdowns in Illinois. A progressive favorite, Ilya Sheyman, lost to a more moderate choice. Tom Kludt has more at Talking Points Memo: “After being branded as a ‘Blue Dog’ and drawing attacks for his previous associations with the Republican party, management consultant Brad Schneider has been vindicated by the voters, surviving a formidable primary challenge on Tuesday from 25-year-old former community organizer Ilya Sheyman to win the Democratic party’s nomination in Illinois’s 10th Congressional District. … Schneider finished with 47 percent of the vote to Sheyman’s 39 percent. … Sheyman’s candidacy was propped up by staunch support from liberal outfits such as MoveOn and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC). … the party establishment clearly preferred Schneider, who won the endorsement of prominent Democrats such as Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD).” Schneider will face Rep. Bob Dold in November. http://bit.ly/GE9p6W

--The other two Democratic primaries turned out as expected. Rep. Jesse Jackson survived a challenge from former Rep. Debbie Halvorson, winning more than 70 percent of the vote. Tammy Duckworth, another progressive favorite, took two-thirds of her vote in her primary. Duckworth will face Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) in the fall.

ROMNEY GETS LITTLE LOVE ON THE HILL – Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman report: “Mitt Romney’s campaign called on the Washington establishment for help this month. The response: a promise of cash, but not much enthusiasm. On Thursday morning, Romney’s biggest supporters on Capitol Hill are supposed to come out with their best donors to help the GOP front-runner deepen his cash base. But the RSVP list is looking thin. Even though the fundraiser is expected to raise $400,000, the figure organizers say is the goal, only 27 of the nearly 80 lawmakers that endorsed Romney had signed on to raise money just two weeks ahead of the event, according a document obtained by POLITICO. The response reflects an uncomfortable reality for Romney: some Republicans are willing to pony up cash to help him beat President Barack Obama, but that doesn’t mean he’s widely loved.” http://politi.co/GCLD7p

--Sen. John McCain, the GOP’s 2008 standard bearer, said in an interview with Fox Business Radio Tuesday that Romney hasn’t done “as well as we’d hoped,” but is confident he’ll still win the nomination. Video: http://bit.ly/GBrLJ4

DeMINT’S $500K DONATION IRKS GOP LEADERS – Manu Raju writes for the hometown paper: “After the 2010 elections, South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint promised fellow Republicans he wouldn’t try to knock off GOP senators in their primaries this cycle. So when DeMint transferred $500,000 to the Club for Growth, the conservative group that has made veteran Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) its top target, top Republicans on Capitol Hill were furious, the latest sign of a party fracturing amid a contentious primary season. One Senate GOP leadership aide called it a ‘backdoor maneuver to get around the promise and once again put DeMint Inc. ahead of winning a Republican Senate in November.’ Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman, said bluntly that a senator who votes with Republicans 70 percent of the time ‘is a friend and not a 30 percent traitor.’ That’s the Washington GOP’s standard plea to conservatives seeking the ouster of deal-making Republicans in their primaries.” http://politi.co/GH6V5R

MURRAY COY ABOUT WHETHER DSCC WILL BACK DEM NOMINEE IN MAINE – Manu Raju sends this dispatch to Huddle: “There may be a handful of Democrats in the Maine Senate primary, but Sen. Patty Murray still won't say whether the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will back her party's eventual nominee. ‘We'll take a look at the field, there's a lot going on and we're just going to watch and see what happens here over the next few months,’ Murray told Huddle when asked if the DSCC would back the nominee. The entrance of independent Angus King, the former governor, has made the DSCC's calculation trickier, since many expect him to caucus with Democrats should he win the race. And party insiders believes it makes more sense to see King consolidate support among Democrats and independent voters, rather than risk the prospects of the splitting the vote with the Democratic nominee and handing Republicans the seat.

BERMAN ROLLS OUT ISRAEL MISSILE SHIELD BILL – Jon Allen scoops: Rep. Howard Berman, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, plans to drop a bill today that would pave the way for the U.S. to help Israel buy and maintain more Iron Dome missile-defense systems. Under the legislation, which is cosponsored by Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the president would be authorized to work through the secretaries of Defense and State to assist Israel in expanding the Iron Dome program beyond its current reach. “When Palestinian terrorists launched their latest round of missile attacks on innocent Israelis, the Iron Dome anti-missile system saved innocent lives and prevented an escalation of hostilities and a full blown crisis," Berman says in a release due out today. "Israel must have the ability to defend itself from rocket and missile attacks, and the United States will continue to stand by our strong ally if called upon in times of need." Berman's focus on issues affecting Israel has taken on added significance in recent months because he is locked in a tough primary against another Jewish Democrat from Southern California, Rep. Brad Sherman, in a newly formed district with a significant Jewish population.

STEARNS CONTINUES BIRTHER PUSH -- Roll Call’s Jonathan Strong reports: “Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, today reiterated concerns about whether President Barack Obama’s long form birth certificate, released in April, is authentic. Referring to an investigation by Maricopa County [Ariz.] Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Stearns said he is ‘looking at all the evidence.’” Stearns first stepped onto the Birther brigade at a town hall last month in Florida, where he questioned whether Obama’s birth certificate was “legitimate.” http://bit.ly/GBd6X4

TRANSITIONS: HARDEN AND HAWN FORM GRANITE -- Ali Harden and Kristen Hawn are set to announce the creation of Granite Integrated Strategies, a bipartisan public affairs and strategic communications firm. Harden, the Republican, is a former spokeswoman for First Lady Laura Bush, worked on both of President George W. Bush's campaigns and most recently worked at DCI Group. Hawn, the Democrat, was a top aide to Blue Dog Democrats in the House and previously worked at Fleishman-Hillard. "As with any political campaign lobbying, advocacy and communications efforts must be fully integrated to achieve success. We see an increased need to align the essential elements of winning political campaigns when it comes to messaging campaigns for corporate clients. We are excited to bring our collective work experience and a bipartisan approach to the table for clients, Harden and Hawn say in a press release due out later today. www.granite-is.com

EXPORT-IMPORT REJECTION WON’T STOP JOBS BILL -- “The U.S. Senate on Tuesday postponed a vote to advance a White House-backed bill to boost small business growth as some Republicans objected to an addition to the measure that would renew the Export-Import Bank's charter,” Reuters’ Sarah Lynch and Alexandra Alper report. “The bill is still expected to advance on Wednesday, Senate Democratic aides told Reuters. Some said they expect it will pass the 60-vote threshold needed to pave the way for final passage, although one aide predicted the vote could be close.” http://reut.rs/GDmGzZ

McCARTHY SWIPES AT SENATE GOP – John Stanton writes for Roll Call: “House Republicans are fond of portraying the Senate as a graveyard for dozens of bipartisan bills, accusing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) of purposefully blockading bills that should, in theory, be easy to move. But for House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, a significant amount of blame for the legislative dead zone that is the Senate lies with that chamber’s Republican minority. While Reid and President Barack Obama are indeed partially to blame, the California Republican bluntly said in a recent interview with Roll Call that the internal political goals of the Senate GOP have contributed to the obstruction of the House’s agenda.” http://bit.ly/GDHGDY

GOOD WEDNESDAY MORNING, MARCH 21, 2012, and welcome to The Huddle, your play-by-play preview of the day’s congressional news. Please send tips, suggestions, comments, complaints, corrections to swong@politico.com. If you don't already, please follow me on Twitter @scottwongDC. Jake is @jakesherman, Jon is @jonallendc and Robillard is @PoliticoKevin.

My new followers include, but are not limited to @barry_dill and @whitney_geene.

TODAY IN CONGRESS – The Senate’s in at 9:30 a.m. and resumes consideration of the House-passed JOBS bill, but there are no votes currently scheduled. At 2:30 p.m., the Senate will recognize Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) as the longest serving woman in the history of Congress.

The House is in at 10 a.m. with first and last votes expected between 2 and 3 p.m. The House will vote on a Senate amendment to the United States Marshals Service 225 th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act and begins six hours of debate on a bill to repeal the health care law's Independent Payment Advisory Board.

--As the House takes up the IPAB repeal, Speaker Boehner says in a new video: “There’s only one way to truly fix ObamaCare, and that’s by fully repealing it.” http://youtu.be/h9MoCDO89HM

Sens. Bernie Sanders, Richard Blumenthal, Cardin, Franken and Amy Klobuchar discuss stopping excessive oil speculation at 11:30 a.m. in the Senate Studio. Reps. Chris Smith, Jean Schmidt, Todd Akin and Trent Franks talk about the new Obama administration abortion rule at 1 p.m. at the House Triangle. Also at 1, Rep. Tom Price holds a news conference with House Republican Doctors and Nurses at in HVC Studio A and Reps. George Miller and Ruben Hinojosa speak on the health care act’s benefits for young adults at the Senate Swamp.

RUBIO BACKS TRAYVON MARTIN PROBE -- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) supports the Justice Department’s decision to investigate the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, a Florida high schooler who was unarmed when a neighborhood watchman killed him. But Rubio defended the Sunshine State’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law, which he voted for and has been used to justify not prosecuting Martin’s killer. “"Let's let the Justice Department go in -- these are professionals, they'll know what they're looking for -- before people rush to judgment on whether a change in law is (necessary),” Rubio told the Tampa Bay Times’ Alex Leary. http://bit.ly/GB496e

WARREN EDGING BROWN IN NEW POLL -- A new survey from Public Policy Polling shows Democrat Elizabeth Warren leading Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), with 46 percent of the vote to Brown’s 41 percent. The Democratic pollster shows a different result than several recent non-partisan polls, and the key difference is how the race is playing among independents. PPP’s Tom Jensen reports: “At the end of his first year in office Brown was nearly running even with Democrats, with 35% approving of him to 41% who disapproved. Now he's at 23/63 across party lines. And although he remains popular with independents at 53/34, it's not the 61/25 rating he enjoyed with them at the end of 2010.” http://bit.ly/GBib6r

--And in a new afterward to his memoir, “Against All Odds,” Brown manages to fit in a bipartisan message, a shot at Warren and a reminder of his military service. The Boston Globe’s Noah Bierman reports: “US Senator Scott Brown writes a gripping account of a ‘dead run toward a nearby bunker,’ while enemy fire came close enough to an Afghanistan air base ‘to glimpse the bright flash of light,’ in a new afterword to his best-selling memoir, released today in paperback. Brown, an officer in the Massachusetts Army National Guard, writes that the experience -- which he says put him within 800 meters of a blast -- came during a week-long trip in August to Bagram Airfield as part of his annual training. … ‘Some people are always looking for others to blame,’ he writes. ‘They like to throw rocks and sow division. That’s never been my style.’ The line is likely a reference to Warren, a Harvard professor and consumer advocate.” http://bo.st/GDdAkv

RYAN BUDGET CONTINUED … The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza examines Ryan’s political ambitions, and finds he isn’t interested in either the White House or the Senate, but might want the Ways and Means gavel: “Not only does Ryan not relish politics but, not surprisingly, he has few in the way of political advisers. Minnesota Republican Party Chairman Pat Shortridge and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus are close to Ryan personally and have significant political chops. … ‘I think we are more likely to see Paul Ryan become the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee than a senatorial or even presidential candidate,’ said the source. ‘This is a guy with a real passion for policy. He is no political animal despite the fact that many would like him to be.’ Ryan, the chairman of the Budget Committee, is currently the fifth ranking Republican on Ways and Means. The committee’s chairman, Michigan Rep. Dave Camp, will be term limited out of that post at the end of 2014 and Ryan is considered a top contender for the gavel.” http://wapo.st/GDKF1i

--The Post’s Ezra Klein, meanwhile, argues the CBO scoring for Ryan’s plan is based on unrealistic assumptions crafted by the Wisconsin Republican, and singles out one assumption in particular: “He’s saying that in 2050, spending on defense, on food stamps, on infrastructure, on education, on research and development, on the federal workforce, and everything other non-entitlement program combined will be less than four percentage points of GDP. Consider that defense spending has never fallen below three percentage points of GDP, and Mitt Romney has promised to keep it above four percentage points of GDP. Ryan has not outlined a realistic goal.” http://wapo.st/GCqfkD

--The Associated Press’ Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports the Ryan plan has an unlikely source of inspiration: “Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the top GOP budget writer, borrowed the idea of insurance exchanges, a big pooled marketplace, from the health care law enacted in Massachusetts when GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney was governor. Ryan wants to set one up for Medicare. Obama borrowed the same idea to make exchanges available to uninsured working families through his law. Experts who see some agreement rather than irreconcilable differences are scratching their heads and wondering if politicians of both parties may have more in common than they care to admit to voters in the heat of an election year.” http://bit.ly/GI20TT

--Last Friday, the Club for Growth came out against the Ryan plan even before its release, issuing a statement calling any plan that doesn’t balance the budget in the next decade “an exercise in futility.” But they were quiet yesterday after Ryan premiered the plan. A Club spokesman told Huddle the group was still “reviewing” the proposal.

BUFFETT RULE’S IMPACT LIMITED -- The Associated Press’ Alan Fram reports the Buffett Rule would be a mere drop in the deficit bucket: “Obama has proposed requiring that people earning at least $1 million annually pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes, but has provided few details. In an analysis provided to The AP on Tuesday, Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that a bill introduced last month by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., attempting to enshrine Obama's proposal into law would collect $47 billion through 2022.” http://abcn.ws/GHdzMV

OFF THE TABLE -- A “grand bargain” offer the administration made to House Speaker John Boehner is no longer on the table, a senior administration official tells Talking Points Memo’s Brian Beutler, contradicting a detail in the Washington Post’s massive tick-tock of the negotiations. Beutler writes: “At a Tuesday background briefing for reporters, a senior administration official, who would not agree to be named or quoted, took issue with that and other details in the piece. There’s a sense in which both the Post and the White House might actually be in agreement. The Post doesn’t specify what their unnamed source meant by ‘the offer.’ As the senior official noted in Tuesday’s briefing at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building many of the issues Obama and Boehner tried to tackle were addressed by the discretionary spending caps in the debt limit deal. A renewed push for a grand bargain would have to reflect that.” http://bit.ly/GBCB0i

PALESTINE AID COULD BE RELEASED -- The Huffington Post’s Joshua Hersh reports: “House appropriators on Tuesday were scrambling to complete a deal that would result in the release of some $150 million in development aid to the Palestinian territories that has been held up for the past six months, numerous officials told The Huffington Post. The aid has been stalled since late last summer, when Congress, led by the House Foreign Affairs Committee's chairwoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), put a stop to all funding to the Palestinian Authority over its attempt to seek statehood at the United Nations. … At a Tuesday hearing, Ros-Lehtinen challenged Rajiv Shah, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, to justify his agency's aid to the West Bank. She later issued a press release championing her leadership. After the day's hearings, staffers on both sides of the aisle told HuffPost that some money must be released immediately. Republican staffers floated the idea of a partial release -- $70 million, many said -- to at least relieve the current crisis for the nongovernmental organizations.” http://huff.to/GCyYUF

TUESDAY’S TRIVIA WINNER – Jeff Nelligan was first to correctly answer that former Supreme Court Justice Byron “Whizzer” White rushed for over 1,000 yards in a single college football season. He rushed 1,121 yards for Colorado University in 1937.

TODAY’S TRIVIA – Nelligan offers today’s question: Which former Senate staffer would go on to write 16 episodes of NBC’s “The West Wing”? First to correctly answer gets a mention in the next Huddle. Email me at swong@politico.com.

WEATHER -- Cloudy, with some sun breaking through in the afternoon and highs in the low 70s, according to ABC 7’s Brian van de Graaf.

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About The Author

Scott Wong covers transportation for POLITICO Pro, and authors The Huddle, POLITICO’s popular morning tipsheet on Congress. He was a congressional reporter with the publication from 2010 to 2012.

He reported from Tucson, Ariz., after the deadly shooting rampage that severely injured Rep. Gabby Giffords and helped break a story about Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill’s private plane that led to her admission she owed more than $300,000 in state property taxes.

He got his professional start in journalism covering local government for two small newspapers in his native San Francisco Bay Area. He later became a staff writer for The Arizona Republic, where he covered the Arizona statehouse and Phoenix City Hall.

After graduating from UCLA, he spent a year teaching English in a rural mountain village in Japan. He is a member of the Asian American Journalists Association, and lives with his wife and daughter in Washington.